The Daily Knight
- Oct 6, 2023

Sr. Dede Byrne, hundreds of Catholic women sign letter demanding bishops uphold Church teaching

The Daily Knight

The letter calls on bishops attending the Synod on Synodality to ‘present evidence’ that they ‘continue to profess the Catholic Faith’ amid widespread heresy in the Church.

Faithful Catholic women have called on bishops at the heterodox Synod on Synodality to reaffirm Catholic doctrine, denouncing the idea of female ordinations and “welcoming” unrepentant public sinners into the Church.

The “Declaration of Catholic Women on the ‘Synod on Synodality’” was initiated and signed by Janet E. Smith, former professor of moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Sister Deirdre Byrne, POSC, a medical doctor and retired U.S. Army colonel, and Rachel Campos-Duffy, co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend and the mother of nine children.

More than 600 other women have signed the declaration as of publication time.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church to be the ‘light of the world’, that through the successors of the Apostles we might hear His voice and all nations be led to eternal salvation,” the letter begins.

“Yet in recent times the moral authority of the Catholic Church appears to have been co-opted by the spirit of the world, and her voice silenced on matters that threaten the lives and eternal salvation especially of the young,” it adds, citing transgender mutilation of children with “gender reassignment” surgeries and puberty-blocking drugs.

“This surrender to the world is reaching its climax with the forthcoming gathering in Rome called the ‘Synod on Synodality,’” the letter continues.

The faithful Catholic women lament that “Female participants whom Pope Francis has appointed and given a vote equal to a bishop or cardinal have advocated heretical doctrines and espouse views contrary to the Catholic Faith.”

“In the preparatory documents themselves, poisonous error is insinuated to the effect that unrepentant notorious public sinners should be ‘welcomed’ into the Church without repentance,” the letter states, adding that “Such a ‘welcome’ would only ensure more terrible torments for these individuals in the world to come, as anyone who professed the Catholic Faith would know.”

The Catholic women wholeheartedly reject the idea of women being ordained or represented in the “governance” of the Church, as well as attempts to “revise” Catholic teaching on homosexuality.

“As Catholic women who practice the faith and believe all that Holy Mother Church teaches, we wish to be represented only by bishops, to whom Christ entrusted the governance and leadership of His Church, and only insofar as they believe and profess the Church’s Faith,” the letter reads. “Therefore, to those bishops, the actual successors of the Apostles, mingled among the mixed assembly of laypersons and ecclesiastics purporting to be a ‘Synod of Bishops’ and soon to be assembled in Rome, we the undersigned Catholic laywomen demand evidence that you do in fact continue to profess the Catholic Faith.”

The letter then asks the bishops participating at the Synod to profess the Catholic teaching on the solely male priesthood, the objective and grave sinfulness of homosexual acts, the need for sacramental confession “by those whose conscience is burdened with mortal sin” before receiving Holy Communion, and that Catholic dogma cannot change or be “suited to the culture of each age.”

“Because if you do not believe with the Church on each of these points, then you are false shepherds whom Christ’s sheep—who hear His voice and follow Him—cannot follow,” the letter concludes.

Catholic women can sign the statement here.